I have 2, for personal use (so that facebook leaves me alone with game "announcements" in my serious mailboxes). Am I alone ? And I'm not even in Sales.

In my company's sales team most everybody has at least a "commercial" and a private account. That means our company "has" euhm... a dozen facebook accounts perhaps, something like that. You could call it "astroturfing" probably, because it kinda is. Everybody does it.

Logic failure. Just because you have one account for social use and one for business, one of which you could call "fake", and you consider that "okay", doesn't suddenly mean that you have to accept that all fake Facebook accounts have to be "okay". Fake accounts for the purposes of astroturfing or propaganda are definitely not okay.

In my company's sales team most everybody has at least a "commercial" and a private account. That means our company "has" euhm... a dozen facebook accounts perhaps, something like that. You could call it "astroturfing" probably, because it kinda is. Everybody does it.

Logic failure. Just because you have one account for social use and one for business, one of which you could call "fake", and you consider that "okay", doesn't suddenly mean that you have to accept that all fake Facebook accounts have to be "okay". Fake accounts for the purposes of astroturfing or propaganda are definitely not okay.

Exactly. It's one thing to create fake identities to sell shit, it's a completely different activity to create fake identities to kill people. (But who am I kidding? Our government has been doing that for decades.)

Actually, the usage being described (separate "serious" and "game" account names) is an old tradition. With actors, they're called "stage names"; with writers they're called "pen names", etc. It's also common in English-speaking and some other societies for married women with professional careers to use their "maiden name" professionally and their married name socially.

These are all recognized by law in most countries as legitimate cases of multiple public identities. The reason is the same: People everywhere tend to pigeonhole you by your name. So if you want to have several independent roles, you need several names.

This is especially common for writers and actors, for well-known reasons. If you make a name for yourself as a comedian or comedy writer, your serious efforts won't be taken seriously. The only solution is to do them under a different name. This is why, for instance, the mathematician Charles Dodgson published his childrens' stories under the name Lewis Carroll. If he'd published them as written by Charles Dodgson, nobody would have taken his mathematical or other writing seriously.

An example that a lot of people here may appreciate: Many of the well-known science-fiction authors are pen names. The reason is that if you become a successful sci-fi writer, publishers will refuse to publish anything else you write. Once your name is associated with sci-fi, it discredits everything else you write. But this isn't just a sci-fi problem; it applies to nearly every writer who wants to publish in two or more different categories.

For actors, type-casting is a well-known phenomenon. They also have the problem of being celebrities, meaning constant harassment by fans, paparazzi, etc. Using stage names is a very sensible solution to these problems.

It shouldn't be surprising that people would learn the same lesson online, and create multiple identities for different topics that they're interested in. The same pigeonholing has developed very strongly online, and all the old reasons for multiple identities applies here. It's encouraged by the way that so many web sites have rules for acceptable names. I prefer the id "jc", but that was already taken here, so I added two digits that would be meaningful to most/. readers. Other forums forbid 2-char names entirely, so I'm forced to add characters for them. This is a somewhat silly way to get multiple online identities, but web-site culture doesn't allow me to have a single online identity. So I shrug, and keep a list of them, indexed by domain name.

I didn't believe this until my current job. Even though I've pretty much always worked Navy sponsored programs, the amount that it appears that they have to deal with in terms of operating under impossible budgets/manning surprised the hell out of me.

ie: You have to train 10 men, here 2 trainers. Training takes 4 days per person. You have 1 week.

I want to know when the Air Force will quit wasting money on the F-35 and F-22, these programs serve no purpose than to keep Air Force pilots flying fast with their scarves blowing in the wind - a complete and total waste - spend the money on better UAV's and ISR platforms - I see no future war on the horizon where having the best multi-role fighter will be any kind of advantage - the wars of the future are asymmetric and will be fought on different battlefields....

A fair number of people (I even know a bunch, rather than just reading about it) have their accounts locked by Facebook HQ for not being "real persons". Private citizens then need to jump through hoops in order to get their accounts back.

The US govt on the other hand will just specially deliver a National Security Letter or two (or a lot more). Facebook will have to secretly keep the secret personas unlocked for secret reasons and secret govt officials.

So you hate facebook's policy, a sentiment I can't but support. Great. Continue. At this point I'd rather share my pictures with someone who demands you sign the EULA with blood than with facebook. Yep, even microsoft.

But why work out your anger on the military doing a bit of spying and/or astroturfing ? It's their job. If I were tasked with protecting citizens I would pick up as much data as possible too, I'd want a few hundred instruments like this, including real live people doing the spying and astrotur

Sure they're scammers. Normal scammers try to trick you into signing a contract to give them money. Of course, they have no recourse if you sign the contract and then don't pay them, since they're breaking the law anyway. The U.S. Military wants to trick you into signing a contract to give them your life. If they succeed and you try to reneg, they can imprison or execute you (try finding that clause in any other employment contract).Of course they're scammers, their primary targets are the young and weak-mi

Clearly, you didn't read the article. Which I know is an absurd thing to do on/.

However.. this is not about making an account for @Area51 or a Facebook page, so you can Like the Marine Corps.

The USAF wants a software package that will allow a user to create and manage 10 separate accounts that are geograhically and culturally correct for the area the account is supposed to be from. And they want the package to be able to handle at least 50 such users.

As [ a single mom / a taxpayer / someone who works in this field / someone who just learned about this in high school / a fellow 1ee7 hax0r / someone who's been there ] I must object to the way you talk about [ the people who defend us / our proud military / our overlords / these really cool people ] !!!

There's an article about that at arstechnica. It seems the air force can dial up a company called HBGary to purchase such account services, presumably using an analog line and PSTN number in order to reach HBGary. Still, I wouldn't bet that even the phone is operational.

In June 2010, the government was expressing real interest in social networks. The Air Force issued a public request for "persona management software," which might sound boring until you realize that the government essentially wanted the ability to have one agent run multiple social media accounts at once.

So after the Egyptian rioting the US feels a need to keep a close eye on public communications being posted on through social networks? What are they going to do with it is the question. Do they simply want to be aware of what political public climate changeos are occurring or will the power become abused as they start pulling down accounts that post links to politically sensitive issues they'd rather not have spread around.

The NSA would watch your site, you would get a lot of hits from strange bots, front.coms, networks, contractors.
Other more clean teams would then jump in and try and shape, misdirect, milk, discredit or form long term friendships.

If somebody with no personality "friends" you, then you know he is a government agent. Just like the guy at the G-twenty summit in Toronto who carried a sign saying "Down with the Oil Sands" was an obvious right winger with the police force, and just like Aaron Barr was found out by Anonymous long before he bragged about "exposing" them. These people are too "smart" for their own good.

Maybe instead of trying to harass people they should try to make the world a better place. Like for example instead of the U

Try reading the facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities [facebook.com], By using or accessing Facebook, you agree to this Statement., section 4.1: You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.

Presumably a law upholding (ahem) organisation like the US government and its agencies will want to abide with agreements that they enter in to ???

Why can they just lie and expect to get away with it. So does that imply that I can lie on my tax form and also expect to get away with it ?
I am sorry: this is not acceptable. Governments seem to regard the law and good morals as something that others need to obey, not themselves.
What about the individuals who manage these fake accounts, if I ordered an employee of mine to lie they would be liable to prosecution just as I would be; why
should government employees be any different ?

Facebook's user agreement isn't law... it's just a user agreement. If I invite you into my home, I might ask you to first agree to take off your shoes before entering. If you agree to my terms and conditions, but then come into my house with your shoes on, you're not breaking any laws (but you might get kicked out of my house). Income tax on the other hand, is federal law (Title 26 of US code). Breaking Facebook's user agreement isn't illegal, but lying on your income tax is usually very illegal.

Uh, hacking is illegal too. Do you really think the government gives 2 shits about this? You can go to your Navy recruiter tomorrow and sign up to be a CTN and you will be hacking networks in no time. Military trumps face-book eula, come on man you can't be serious. I'm pretty sure you can't order an employee to carry a rifle either, they can.

Err, well you have to understand that it IS illegal for the government to do illegal things. The government just has the advantage that it can make exceptions for itself in many situations because the government decides what IS and ISN'T illegal.

I'm pretty sure I CAN order an employee to carry a rifle as well. Especially if I hired someone to manage my ranch. Do you think if you ran a restaurant you couldn't demand that your chef use knives?

Presumably a law upholding (ahem) organisation like the US government and its agencies will want to abide with agreements that they enter in to ???

Why can they just lie and expect to get away with it. So does that imply that I can lie on my tax form and also expect to get away with it ? I am sorry: this is not acceptable. Governments seem to regard the law and good morals as something that others need to obey, not themselves. What about the individuals who manage these fake accounts, if I ordered an employee of mine to lie they would be liable to prosecution just as I would be; why should government employees be any different ?

What makes you think that there has to be one and only one user agreement? It's just the basic agreement that they offer everyone, there is nothing preventing the government from going to Facebook and asking:

"Hey, we want to use your service, but we don't care for the current contract. Here is what we would like: Strike lines 1383 and 273, add these lines...."

For example, you come over to my house and I ask you to take off your shoes. You do so, but when you get in you see that Bob is still wearing his shoes. I respond that I let Bob wear his shoes because he asked if he could, and I said yes. You ask and I say no.

A company doesn't have to offer one 'user agreement to bind them all' and only one. Facebook could have thousands (and probably does) for different jurisdictions, groups, etc.

John Barnett,
John Bigboote,
John Camp,
John Careful Walker,
John Chief Crier,
John Cooper,
John Coyote,
John Edwards,
John Fish,
John Fledgling,
John Gomez,
John Grim,
John Guardian,
John Icicle Boy,
John Jones,
John Joseph,
John Kim Chi,
John Lee,
John Littlejohn,
John Many Jars,
John Milton,
John Mud Head,
John Nephew,
John Nolan,
John O'Connor,
John Omar,
John Parrot,
John Rajeesh,
John Ready to Fly,
John Repeat Dance,
John Roberts,
John Scott,
John Smallberries,
John Starbird,
John Take Cover,
John Thorny Stick,
John Two Horns,
John Whorfin,
John Wood,
John Wright,
John Ya Ya

I don't know what the authors of this film were smoking, but I want some . . .

They are already on most social networking sites. You really think anyone would be supportive of the US government unless they were getting a paycheck out of it? All this software is trying to do is make Goverment Trolls lives easier, so they can troll even more sites more effectively.

There's a recent trend of prosecuting people for "unauthorized use of online systems" when all they did was violate the terms of agreement of Facebook or the like. It's a real stretch to call that "hacking" but they sure tried hard in the 2008 Lori Drew case:

http://www.burneylawfirm.com/blog/tag/hacking/ [burneylawfirm.com]...but it was *federal* prosecutors who argued that the same thing the Air Force wants to do is in fact illegal if private citizens do it. And that wasn't the only such case - two more are discussed on this 2010 page:

On top of all those issues, there might be something else illegal about this, something unique to government actors. Is it constitutional for the state to lie to influence public opinion? Seriously, are we a "democracy" (yeah, I know, technically a Constitutional Republic) anymore, if public opinion can be systematically shifted via...well, bullshit? We have "freedom of information" laws - doesn't that at least imply that information coming from government sources not be a total fraud from top to bottom?

If we let government actors spread BS at will...ummm...we have some really ghastly examples of where that leads. North Korea is probably the worst of the worst possible endgames there but there's a ton of others worldwide.

OH get off it. We have a Constitution which defines how our officials are elected and the President is selected.

Don't bitch and moan that the government followed the Constitution, Following the rules and limitations set forth in the Constitution is EXACTLY what we need the government to do. It is the rules that WE place on the government. You can't get mad for the government following the rules.

This is the reason why a lot of us (advocates of limited government) when people work to have the government do things it isn't authorized to do. Even if it is a 'good' thing to do, we shouldn't let them do it if it isn't in their authorization. If we think they should do it, then we need to give them the authorization by amending the Constitution. Otherwise, the Constitution is pointless. And advocating that the government should ignore the Constitution no matter how 'noble' the cause would be just like advocating for the government to ignore the Bill of Rights.

That's not really what it does, though. For example, the constitution specifies free trade and NAFTA is not a constitutional amendment yet it conflicts sharply with the constitution. The government does whatever it can get away with on behalf of its customers, the major corporations who pay for the campaigns to re-elect the incumbent, or before that, to elect their pet congresscritters.

If you're talking about the electoral college, that and the Senate representation (two per state regardless of the size of the state) was a compromise to keep the big states from completely dominating the small states. That's part of the rulebook and it's necessary.

If however you're talking about electronic ballot fraud, hey man, right there with ya! Google my name with "Diebold" or the like.

pilots get shot down and forced to eject over hostile territories, it's a very good idea to provide them with plausible fake identities which include a rich plausible background.this can save lives and help our solders buy enough time to get rescued.also, if a spook wants to contact, let's say, the nsa or the cia from a hostile territory, i doubt he'll go over the phone.plus in many places encryption is a sign of wrongdoing, so using facebook and even slashdot commentary might be a good way to communicate home.dear mods, next time you see a troll, it's just might be a coded message from a secret agent.

This is not the reason why they're doing this. If you don't think they can spot an American 500 miles away, you're wrong. If you think that a "spook" would contact someone over facebook, again wrong (unsecured, no encryption/tunneling, c'mon man). They're not doing this to monitor military personnel. Anti-terrorism intelligence sounds more like something the FBI/CIA would do. I'm pretty sure the soul reason this is being done is for propaganda, I just hope that it's for foreign propaganda and not domestic.

The problem with that obfuscation technique is that it isn't effective when you have an entire history of hundreds of previous coded messages. It might work if only small percentage are legitimate though.

Of course if something is used over and over it is possible to extract extra information. Important messages or statements might only be used once. The above comment could have been a typical 'Nothing new'. But it is a hell of a lot more complicated than that.

IndustrialComplex thinks that the weather was nice yesterday, he wishes it could stay like this for the entire weekend.

Decrypt that message. F

So all those "friends" on my facebook mindlessly telling me throughout the day what they are thinking about making for supper, that they have started making supper, how the supper tasted, and what they want for dessert, and that their dog took too long to crap during their walk - might be secret government clandestine communications??!?!

The problem with your scenario is that is doesn't explain the need for the software. What they are seeking is the ability to fake 500 accounts at a time, how many secret agents would they need to require that kind of throughput? An analogy (sorry no car) is the difference between a web server that can handle 500 hits a day and one that can handle 500 hits simultaneously.

So if you get shot down in enemy territory, they're going to ask to see your Facebook page? I think it's more likely they want to convince you that some of the "friends" you have are really in support of what the government is doing in some oil-rich country and by the way they think file sharing is bad and it should be a crime.

Right, the "lying for security needs" argument. And it's valid, in a lot of cases.

But then a lot of non-security-related stuff gets shoved under the same rug.

The Wikileaks cables dump is FULL of such stuff. For example, you have high-level diplomats and other US government actors saying "hey, the Saudis are massively overstating their oil reserves". And that's considered "secret". Seriously? Sure, it's been suspected by insiders in the oil biz for some time now but those "theories" just got a huge bump

pilots get shot down and forced to eject over hostile territories, it's a very good idea to provide them with plausible fake identities which include a rich plausible background.
this can save lives and help our solders buy enough time to get rescued.

Or, maybe, they shouldn't be flying over hostile territory? Then they won't need to lie? I find it very odd that my government pays people to do things that we also put people in prison for.

The Egyptions protests have demonstrated the incredible utility of social networking sites in enabling a large pool of people to organize around a common idea. Furthermore, the online presence of these discussions stipulates that many of the individual contributing their thoughts have not actually met in person. It is a group of anonymous souls with a common idea attempting to reach out to as many people as possible.
I'm do not claim to be an expert in the group dynamics or how revolutions begin, but it is

The Egyptions protests have demonstrated the incredible utility of social networking sites in enabling a large pool of people to organize around a common idea.

As nice as that does sound it's not true. The egyptian protests had at the most 300 000 people involed. Now, while that's a lot of people we must remember that Egypt has nearly 80 million inhabitants so compared to thatt the protests were actually pretty small. And more importantly: most of the people arrived to the streets after the social networking sites had been blocked.

The media seems to be painting a picture of some sort of revolution facilitated by social networking sites while completely forgetting the fact that no revolution actually took place: Mubarak is gone but the millitary regime that he hailed from is still in power and in fact stronger than ever (actually, the reason the millitary allowed and even endorsed the protests was that Mubarak wanted his son - who has no ties with the military - to be his successor and that angered most of the people in the armed forces). In addition, as I alreasdy stated the 300 000 protestors is not a major achievement for "social media". There have been protest even in middle-east before the era of the internet where millions of people joined the protests, such as the 1979 revolution of Iran. The crowd in Cairo never swelled to the point that it involved a substantial portion of the city.

If your Facebook privacy settings are up all the way (i.e., friends only) then what is there to worry about?

How do you know your "friends" aren't watching YOU? Do you have any FB friends you don't really know? Are you sure?

I may or may not have created a completely bogus account on a popular social networking site, complete with using TOR to create it, fake nationality, language, pictures, names, interests, personal data, email address. I may or may not have quite a number of friends on that account, some from this country, some from other countries.

"...pointed out an AP investigation showing that the U.S. military spends billions to affect public opinion, both domestic and international,"propaganda is to Government as marketing is to everyone else....this is just Comando Solo: online. a bunch of twitter/fb accounts are cheaper to maintain than an EC-130

Slashdot already has acquired notoriety according to some government statements, there was an article about this on slashdot some time ago.

Interestingly Slashdot has attempted to become more mainstream maybe to drive up add revenue. With that it has become a more worthwhile target for spin doctoring and since it has gone down in quality to reach a larger audience, the effort an attacker has to expend has gone down as well. So the bar has been lowered for everyone.

regardless of just how good these fake personas are, they still need real friends, and real communication to look real, and unless this new "app" they are creating is an AI intelligent enough to simulate real conversation and real posts, I would say the flag will go up real quick as to what is fake (or useless) and what is real.